DragonFlyBSD Intel Graphics Driver Gets BXT Support, Aims For A Blob-Free Skylake

[phoronix]

Phoronix: DragonFlyBSD Intel Graphics Driver Gets BXT Support, Aims For A Blob-Free Skylake

Thanks to the fabulous open-source graphics driver porting work done by François Tigeot, the DragonFlyBSD kernel's i915 Intel DRM graphics driver is up to a comparable state to the code ported from the Linux 4.2 kernel...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=DragonFlyBSD-i915-4.2

[chuckula]

DragonFly's "solution" is to just turn off powersaving modes... not all that helpful in the real-world, especially on a mobile system. Maybe Dragonfly doesn't care all that much about mobile.

By those standards, I already have a blob-free Nvidia and AMD graphics solution: Just don't use any features of those graphics cards that require blobs! I'm sure you can get a VGA console running with your $650 GPU just fine!

[Michael]

DragonFly's "solution" is to just turn off powersaving modes... not all that helpful in the real-world, especially on a mobile system. Maybe Dragonfly doesn't care all that much about mobile.

By those standards, I already have a blob-free Nvidia and AMD graphics solution: Just don't use any features of those graphics cards that require blobs! I'm sure you can get a VGA console running with your $650 GPU just fine!

Well, the Linux-libre solution right now is just not to provide any support... So what's better, partially working support or none at all?

[syrjala]

Phoronix: DragonFlyBSD Intel Graphics Driver Gets BXT Support, Aims For A Blob-Free Skylake
Tigeot explained, "starting from Linux 4.2, a separate firmware blob is required to save and restore the state of display engines in some low-power modes. These low-power modes have been forcibly disabled in the DragonFly version of this driver in order to keep it blob-free."

It would be funny to see if GNU Linux-libre ends up trying to port the DragonFlyBSD i915 blob-free changes to their kernel.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...lyBSD-i915-4.2

Huh? Seeing as that's exactly how i915 works *today* when the firmware is not present, there's no need to port anything back.

[darkbasic]

Please stop with this closed firmware nonsense. I'm tired of blobs.